In recent years, remarkably widely used are cards and cell phones (osaifu keitai (trademark) (wallet phone)) that have a passive type communication function via an antenna and are mounted with contactless type integrated circuits capable of storing information (for example, FeliCa (trademark)), and various services that utilize contactless type integrated circuits have appeared. As the services provided with the use of contactless type integrated circuits, main services are a payment and clearing service and the like, and lately, services that provide information via contactless type integrated circuits have also been provided. For example, information providing apparatuses such as kiosk terminals and electronic posters that have a display screen and provide information via contactless type integrated circuits have appeared.
Here, to utilize the services that use contactless type integrated circuits, it is necessary for a contactless type integrated circuit to be held over a dedicated reader/writer device. The reader/writer device is a device for exchanging information through communication with the contactless type integrated circuit. The reader/writer device has an antenna to carry out communication with the contactless type integrated circuit.
To effectively mount the reader/writer device in an information providing apparatus, for example, as disclosed in Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2003-346094, proposed is an information processing system that has a reader/writer device in its housing and is disposed with an antenna of the reader/writer device in a fixed portion of the surface or the back surface of the display screen of the system. When services that utilize a contactless type integrated circuit are provided, this information providing apparatus can facilitate the utilization of the services that use the contactless type integrated circuit by clearly specifying a disposing position of the antenna to a user.
However, in a conventional technology represented by the technology disclosed in Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2003-346094, in order to absorb differences in each implementation specification of a contactless type integrated circuit by an information providing apparatus, or in order to shorten the processing time consumed in providing services when a plurality of the services utilizing a contactless type integrated circuit are provided, a plurality of reader/writer devices are necessary to be mounted in the information providing apparatus, and at this time, the following problem arises.
In other words, the manufacturing cost of the information providing apparatus is increased because a plurality of reader/writer devices are mounted therein. Further, since a plurality of reader/writer devices are mounted in the housing of the information providing apparatus, it is necessary to ensure a space for the mounting, giving rise to a difficulty in making the housing more compact. Furthermore, the information providing apparatus needs processing time to make arrangements (polling processing) of a plurality of the reader/writer devices.
Still further, antennas of a plurality of the reader/writer devices interfere with one another, and this leads to a fear that the interference causes a trouble in communication with the contactless type integrated circuit. In addition, it sometimes occurs that a menu display for guiding presentation of services on the display screen of the information providing apparatus and the antennas of the reader/writer devices are apart from each other, and therefore conveying a precise position over which the contactless type integrated circuit is held to receive a desired service is difficult.